27.02.23 45 Years is a ghost story. And a horror film. But it’s presented as a drama about a retired childless couple with a secret. Delicate on one hand, yet brooding and haunting on the other, the film plants a shard of ice into a seemingly solid marriage and shows us how trust and intimacy […]
29.01.23 The Player is a real enigma of a film. One on hand it’s incredibly cynical, but simultaneously, it’s positively joyous. It’s full of A-List actors, but is acutely ‘anti-Hollywood’. The motives of the film’s central characters are selfish and slimy, but the film is all surface smiles, shiny suits and vacations to Acapulco. I
14.02.23 When I was young, and my baby brother still slept in my parents’ room, if I was scared at night I would sleep on the floor in the same room, on a folding mattress. I would look up to the swirled stucco ceiling and convince myself that the faces I was imagining were not
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27.01.23 Poltergeist makes for a really interesting rewatch, because it feels like such a different film from the one that I used to watch as a kid, late at night on VHS hidden under my blanket. Although some of the scenes that used to terrify me now seem cheesy and outdated, what’s left is a
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11.02.23 The Pale Blue Eye has some really interesting moments and a great Harry Melling performance, but it outstays its welcome and suffers in terms of plot contrivances. The setting is gorgeously chilly, the mystery is intriguing and the bodies pile up. There’s a great cast keeping things afloat, although everyone feels underused apart from
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12.02.23 With the success of HBO’s The Last of Us, as well as me drudging through the second video game (fuck Abby), it felt like a good time to seek out the grandaddy of zombie films, George A. Romero’s seminal Night of the Living Dead. It’s a masterfully simple yet effective horror film with a
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15.02.23 Living is a gentle but emotional British drama led by Bill Nighy’s poignant performance. It feels like a period piece, and displays London’s golden age in sepia tones, reflecting simpler times. Most of the film concerns the bureaucratic tedium of public office, but through the protagonist’s anguish, the mundane instead feels sophisticated and dutiful,
07.02.23 Jim and Andy is the rare occurrence of the documentary being much better than the film it is based on. I think Man on the Moon is a ‘fine’ film, although I always felt it was rushed and compromised in its portrayal of Andy Kaufman’s life. In Jim and Andy, we see the reality
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28.01.23 As an insight into volcanology, this is pretty interesting. As a document on love, companionship and the answering of one’s calling, it’s absolutely beautiful. How the editors managed to turn the footage into a really sharp ‘Wes Anderson-esque’ documentary is thoroughly impressive.
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30.1.23 Battleship Potemkin may not satisfy modern audiences as a piece of entertaining cinema, but as a piece of Soviet communist propaganda and a rich Marxist sociological document, it’s incredibly effective. Its binary narrative of the people versus the establishment is universal in themes and will always have resonance. Although the film is most
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